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','1 



The Porcelain Painter’s Son 


A FANTASY. 


“ Is not this something more than fantasy ?” 

— Hamlet^ Act i, Scene 


Edited, with a Foreword, 

BY 

SAMUEL ARTHUR JONES, M. D. 


PHII^ADKLPHIA : 
BOKRICKK & TAFEIy. 
1898. 




22196 


Copyrighted 1898, 

BY 

BOERICKE & TAFEE. 


r^OCCriES R 




T. B. & H. B. COCHRAN, PRINTERS, 
LANCASTER, PA. 



0 

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Inscribed 


TO 

The Memory 

OF 

A. J. T. 

“ Faithful amongst the faithless found.” 





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FOREWORD. 


The editor is of the opinion that many 
a reader of The Porcelain Painter' s Son 
will ask, “Is not this something more 
than fantasy ?’ ’ In very truth it is; for the 
author, whom we have known long and 
very intimately, is, as he himself puts 
it, ‘ too near the end of the road ’ for 
idle trifling. It is a fantasy, but one that 
is founded upon a solid substratum of 
fact — serious fact to the porcelain paint- 
er’s son, who lived it nearly a century 
agone. Fact and fancy are united to 
form the fabric; the web of a man’s life 
is here, the flowers of fancy are wholly 
in the woof. He who has combined these 
in this fantasy felt to the very core of 
him that some salient facts of Hahne- 
mann’s life should not be allowed to pass 
into forgetfulness so long as it is needful 
that any physician shall be distinguished 


6 


Foreword. 


by the adjective ‘homoeopathic,’ and he 
is fully assured that the flowers of fancy 
need not disturb the most serious reader: 
they are allowed only that they may em- 
bellish the dusty wayside of a fellowman’s 
life just as they do our own. It is then 
as a sprig of rosemary (“that’s for re- 
membrance ’’) that this fantasy is laid on 
the grave of him whose life- journey it 
briefly outlines with only so much of 
over- coloring as flings a deeper shadow 
here and there but gives the salient 
points a bolder relief, while it faithfully 
preserves the perspective. 

The author writes to us, “You will 
see that I found the web of fact in Hahne- 
mann’s life; the woof of fancy alone is 
mine. The fantasy is a ‘ projection ’ not 
at all difficult when a deep reverence in- 
spires the attempt to people the dead 
past, to even live therein in the company 
of actors upon whom the prompter has 
long since rang down the curtain. It is 
not surprising that, in imagination, one 
should be able to enter Frau Weber’s 


Foreword, 


7 

Wirtshaus and both see and hear her 
guests without stepping out from his own 
latter-day surroundings; and such is the 
power of Sympathy that many of us 
can actually feel the good-hearted school- 
master’s ‘ katzenjammer ’ — \NQ.know how 
it is ourselves , — so very human are we 
all !” 

Both the author and his publishers 
have asked a slender service of the 
editor: to separate web from woof, and 
this for the sake of those who are not 
possessed of that knowledge of Hahne- 
mann’s career which the benefits that 
many of such readers have had from his 
labors would seem to make the obliga- 
tion of a becoming sense of gratitude. 
These, it is to be feared, are not to be 
found only among the laity. We do not 
learn that Bradford’s Life of Hahnemann 
is ‘ out of print,’ nor are we especially 
concerned when a generous publisher 
finds himself ‘ out of pocket ’ for an en- 
deavor to provide us homoeopathic phy- 
sicians with the bread of professional life 


8 Foreword. 

— if indeed many of us are alive, at least, 
to our duty ! 

First then as to the staple of fact, in- 
disputable fact. It is true that Hahne- 
mann’s father was a decorator of the 
porcelain ware for which Meissen was 
famous, and a by no means contemptible 
artist. True it is also that he was intel- 
lectually superior to many of his class, 
that he was a man of original ideas, and 
one who did make it a special duty to 
give his son ‘ lessons in thinking. ’ He 
sow’ed the seed of a harvest which many 
of us are selfishly reaping: our ingrati- 
tude therefor being equalled only by our 
ignorance thereof — and both a mute re- 
proach to any breed of parasites. The 
morning interview in the garden is a 
pure figment, but the clay-lamp and the 
piously-purloined oil are the simple truth. 
It is equally true that Herr Muller’s dis- 
cernment of the latent promise of the 
boy Hahnemann prevented the porcelain 
painter from apprenticing his son to his 
own trade. The graduation thesis, with 


Foreword. 


9 

its significant topic, is happily ‘ yard wide 
and all wool.’ The delighted school- 
master’s post-graduate jubilation — well, 
if Herr Muller did n’t have the precise 
experience, he did have every justifica- 
tion for such an one, and he certainly 
neglected a golden opportunity: surely 
Solomon’s ‘time’ is good enough for 
saint and sinner ! 

The patrimony of only twenty thalers 
is the unadorned truth, as the many pri- 
vations of Hahnemann’s student life in 
Teipsic could amply testify — but the 
benedictions often come to us veiled, and 
we recognize them not until after many 
days. The student life in Teipsic is not 
at all exaggerated, and the timely friend- 
ship of the physician von Quarin is the 
greenest leaf in that worthy’s chaplet: 
“As ye did to the least of these !’’ 

The teaching and the night translating- 
work — honest wage-earning — are liter- 
ally true. So, alas ! was the salubrity of 
Dessau. Gommern was indeed terribly 
lanigerous. It is only a fond hope that 


lo Foreword, 

there were ‘ two blankets ’ o’ winter 
nights, for love alone is poor fuel. The 
pitiful accident during the exodus from 
Gommern did happen, but in the happier 
after years the memory of it lost its old- 
time pang. 

After the physician’s ‘ renunciation ’ 
there was found no need for the fictions 
of the fancy; the harsh realities of poverty 
furnish material more than enough. The 
clothes-washing, with potatoes for soap 
and the physician himself ofiiciating at 
the tub, are such truths as adorn — do 
they not ? — 

“The short and simple annals of the poor.” 
And lo ! in the radiance that now invests 
these stern privations we cannot see the 
sordid for the very shine of the metal of 
which those trusty hearts were made. 

True also to the letter is the tale of the 
treasured hoard of dry crusts; and to- 
day we moisten them with our tears. 

“ All else of this fantasy,” writes the 
author, ‘ ‘ is the truth and the triumph of 
the truth, — the end of which is not yet 


Foreword, 


II 


The address, which is put in as an ap- 
pendix at the editor’s sole instigation, 
was not written for publication; but this 
editor heard it delivered, and it is his 
conviction that it should be published, 
and precisely where it now appears. 
Evidently in the author’s mind the two 
writings are closely related. In the ad- 
dress he openly reproves the homoeo- 
pathic school in America for lapses that 
are not to its credit. He plainly inti- 
mates that homoeopathy to-day is taken 
up as a trade rather than espoused as a 
Cause needing advocates who are pene- 
trated by its truths. He insinuates, at 
least to our understanding of the address 
as we heard it spoken, that the mercan- 
tile spirit rather than the scholastic pre- 
vails in both professor, practitioners and 
students. The supreme aim and end of 
the student is the diploma rather than 
the qualification for it; the legal right to 
practice, without that moral right lack- 
ing which no graduate in Medicine is 


12 


Foreword, 


other than a peril to whomsoever shall 
entrust life to him. 

He by implication arraigns every ho- 
moeopathic college that teaches the prac- 
tice of homoeopathy without fully incuU 
eating its principles. He evidently as- 
cribes the murrain of unbelief that per- 
vades and perverts American homoe- 
opathy to this shameless dereliction. 

He most earnestly believes that Hahne- 
mann is worthy of better advocates; and 
he is persuaded that every college of ho- 
moeopathic name or pretense can do no 
worthier work for years to come than teach 
the matriculate at least something of the 
stature^ the acquirements, the labors and 
the teachings of him who founded the ho- 
moeopathic school. 

He has his own triumvirate of worthies, 
Hippocrates, Sydenham, Hahnemann, 
and measuring these by the record of their 
life-work, he acknowledges with devout 
gratitute obligations to each that are 
not to be measured with words; but 
when one asks him why do you bear the 


Foreword, 


13 


name of a *sect,’ he makes reply: In 
common gratitude for the truth he brings 
that can not be found elsewhere. ’ ’ 





'll 

■ ' • 

' t 


« -41 









CONTENTS. 


Introductory and explanatory: A Foreword 
for the lay-reader 

CHAPTER I. 

The village Wirtshaus and its guests. The 
Porcelain Painter. The boy who was 
taught to think. “ Mein Herren, I must 
go and give my boy his lesson in think- 
ing.” 

CHAPTER II. 

The interview in the garden. “ Mein lieber 
Freund^ what is this I hear from little 
Fritz?” ‘‘I, too, am a worker in clay, 
and shall I not seek for the fitting orna- 
ment?” The boy’s clay lamp and the 
stolen oil. The schoolmaster’s mishap 
in the Wirtshaus. Sehr geimiethlich. 
The graduation thesis. The graduation 
night: ” He can only sometimes talk, 
but always drink.” To Leipsic 

CHAPTER III. 

The medical student. Von Quarin’s friend- 
ship. Baron von Buckenthal’s librarian. 


i6 


Contents. 


The graduate of Erlangen. The world as 
an oyster. Dessau. The largest old 
school dose the Porcelain Painter’s Son 
ever took. The good folk of Dessau are 
so terribly healthy. The sheep of Gom- 
mern — both species. The exodus and 
the accident. The perils of thinking. 

The renunciation. “ God help me, I will 
practice no more? ” Chemist and trans- 
lator. Potato soap. The bequest of the 
crusts * • 46 


CHAPTER IV. 

Cullen’s Treatise of The Materia Medica. 

The spark and the illumination. The 
application of the Baconian method. The 
philosophy of Homoeopathy. “ You can 
learn what any medicinal substance is 
capable of doing in the human organism 
by administering it, in suitable doses and 
for a sufficient period of time, to persons 
in health.” The experiment in cot pore 
sano enables the demonstration in corpore 
vile. The sunset. ‘ ‘ And he arose and 
followed him.” 66 


APPENDIX. 

” Under which king, Bezonian ” A shoe 
which may fit various feet, but pinching 
as all ” tight fits ” do 85 


The Porcelain Painter’s Son. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE ARTISAN. 

From its two side windows tHe 
candle light was gleaming and 
flickering upon the fading leaves 
of the ancient oak that overshad- 
owed Frau Weber’s Wirthshaus in 
the quaint and quiet village of 
Meissen. Now and then a falling 
leaf would swirl through the line 
of light to be lit up by a transient 
gleam of radiance ere it sank into 
the shadow of the night. Even so 
did those artless villagers, one by 
one, themselves drop away: the 


1 8 The Porcelain 

gladness of an upright life light- 
ing up their wrinkled faces as 
they too passed on into the shadow 
of the night. 

Though cheery from without 
still cheerfuller was the Wirths- 
haus within. The Frau’s genial 
Guin Aben" made the passing 
stranger welcome, and the com- 
forting porcelain stove added its 
friendly warmth to hers. The 
ashen floor, nearly as white as a 
wheaten loaf, and the snowy sand 
that glistened thereon bespoke the 
tidy house-wife, while the polished 
lids of the row of beer mugs told 
at once of industry, cleanliness, 
and a wise concern for the comfort 
of her guests. In the place of 
honor on the wainscoted wall 
hung an old engraving of Unser 
Fritz^ as the people still delighted 


Painter's Son, 19 

to call him, and directly opposite, 
a series of old woodcuts illustra- 
tive of Reinicke der Fuchs. A vig- 
orous likeness of Luther’s rugged 
features and one of the good- 
natured face of Hans Sachs com- 
pleted the collection, and suggested 
that Frau Weber’s Wirthshaus 
had patrons of an unusual order. 
That fact was, indeed, the crown- 
ing glory of the Frau’s life, for 
the choicest of the village were her 
nightly visitants. Yes, at the 
Frau’s tables, which were polished 
until they were almost mirrors, 
gathered a variety of groups 
hardly to be met out of Germany. 
In the Herren Stuebchen.^ the Pas- 
tor Burgomeister.^ Doktor.^ and the 
Amtsnotar met evenings, and over 
their wine talked upon matters too 
high for the common ken : their 


20 


The Porcelain 


select company being shared on 
rare occasions by some passing 
traveller whose bearing denoted 
his superior station in life. In the 
main room a couple of toothless 
Stamgaste sat by themselves, and 
smoked and drank their beer, and 
exchanged their respective gather- 
ings of the village gossip, and 
laughed and laughed again at the 
thousand-times-told jokes that were 
far older and even drier than 
themselves. Not far from these 
the always-jolly miller, the baker 
and several of the small shop- 
keepers met each other to discuss 
the crops and the market. Yet 
another group was composed of 
artisans from the porcelain factory, 
for which Meissen was chiefly re- 
nowned. 

At this particular table might 


Painter's Son, 


21 


be seen a man of extreme plain- 
ness of dress for even one of bis 
class, but whose face was singu- 
larly attractive. He had a broad, 
high forehead, dark, flashing eyes, 
that were overshadowed by the 
heavily-barred brow, and a well- 
shapen head, which was fitly 
crowned with luxuriant brown 
curly hair. Whenever he spoke 
his companions seemed to forget 
their beer and were intent only on 
listening. They rarely made a 
direct reply to him, but were 
prompt enough to put their ques- 
tions. He always spoke in an un- 
assuming manner and with evi- 
dent deliberation, as if he held 
himself accountable for his light- 
est word. He had learned, long 
before Schiller had written it, that 
Ernst ist das Leben^ and with that 


22 


The Porcelain 


conviction constantly present, lie 
lived as one realizing that he is 
ever in his great Taskmaster’s eye. 

Though one of the poorest men 
in Meissen, no one was more re- 
spected. The Pastor had always 
his friendliest greeting for the 
painter on porcelain — for that was 
his handicraft, and Herr Mueller, 
the schoolmaster, was never hap- 
pier than when in his company; 
for which purpose, indeed, he had 
some time since forsaken the 
grander guests in the Herren 
Stuehchen in order to be with his 
favorite at the artisans’ table. 
One attempt, at least, had been 
made to beguile the porcelain 
painter from the table at which his 
fellow-workmen gathered to the 
more pretentious one that was 
graced by the village dignitaries, 


Painter's Son. 


23 

and none other than the admiring 
Pastor had sought to bring about 
this change. But the prompt re- 
ply to the suggestion had been: 
“No; he boils himself a bad soup 
who forgets amongst whom he was 
born.” Despite the reproof, the 
more than ever admiring Pastor 
could not keep this incident to 
himself, and when it became 
known the hearts of the artisans 
grew closer than ever to their 
manful companion. 

The porcelain painter’s home 
was rich in children — the poor 
man’s wealth, whatever else the 
Fates deny. These were sent to 
the village school as soon as they 
were old enough, although the 
teacher’s stipend was a serious 
drain upon the meagre earnings 
of the father; but he and his good 


24 The Porcelain 

wife were adepts in those self- 
denials of the poor that give a 
heavenly lustre to the lowliest 
lives. 

One little lad, some twelve years 
of age, was the constant companion 
of the porcelain painter in such 
hours of leisure as his toilsome 
life allowed. Sunday after Sun- 
day and on all holidays hand in 
hand they took their walks ; and 
the father made Nature the book 
from which he taught his child. 
From flower, and leaf, and bird, 
and beast he had gotten his 
fresh and faithful designs for 
the pictures he painted on the 
porcelain vessels ; and from long 
communion with nature he had 
learned something of the rare art 
of seeing. This he fain would 
teach his boy, leading his fresh 


Painter's Son, 25 

young mind the while from the 
wonders of the created thing to the 
grandeur and glory of the Creator. 

On these delightful days the 
sports of his schoolmates lost their 
zest for the porcelain painter’s son. 
Nothing could then beguile him 
from his father’s side ; no school- 
boy games could charm him into 
forgetfulness of the pleasant ram- 
bles, when they strolled afar and 
ate their frugal noonday meal by 
the side of some rippling brook or 
in some nook filled with the hidden 
music of the forest’s birds. The 
boy’s grave thoughtfulness, his 
curious questions, and even the 
depth of his insight, filled the 
father’s heart with thankfulness ; 
and, lo ! poverty forgot its every 
pang and in a child’s companion- 


26 


The Porcelain 


ship the father tasted the delights 
of Paradise. 

As was the custom in those 
days, and indeed is yet in Vaier- 
land^ each evening the father 
sought the Wirthshaus and there 
rested from his day’s toil in the 
delightful calm which shuns the 
gilded palace for that humbler 
place — the like of which Labor 
finds not on this earth. It was the 
nightly unbending of the bow that 
had been tightly strung all day, 
that would be re-strung day after 
day until the tired hand had lost 
its cunning and the eye grew dim 
and the worn out toiler became the 
pensioner of God. At these even- 
ing gatherings his companions ob- 
served that, invariably, at a certain 
early hour the porcelain painter 
emptied his stein and bade them 


Painter* s Son, 


27 

Gut* Nacht, It mattered not how 
interesting the conversation or 
how rapt his listeners — as the 
finger of the clock pointed to the 
precise minute, he uprose and took 
his departure. 

Such was the force of the porce- 
lain painter^s personality that 
none of his companions had ever 
dreamed of calling him to account 
for these abrupt leave-takings, 
which left them a silence that 
they still preferred to the plati- 
tudes of common talk — although 
that silence was as the ceasing of 
pleasing music. But one memor- 
able night the talk had soared be- 
yond its usual wont, and their 
pipes had gone out, and their beer 
had grown flat, — and still they 
listened. The clock finger pointed 
to the well-known minute ; the 


28 


The Porcelain 


porcelain painter arose, his face 
shining with the light of the high 
truths they had been considering, 
and with his familiar smile, he had 
spoken his hearty Guf* Nacht^ 
when Hans Lindermann, the very 
oldest of his companions, grasped 
him by the arm, exclaiming : “6^ 

mem lieber Freund^ why do you 
leave ns in the sky, from which we 
cannot get down unless we tumble, 
like Satan from Heaven 

The porcelain painter smiled 
gravely and with a parting bow 
said : “ Meine Herren^ I must go 
and give my boy his lesson in 
thinking.” 


Painter's Son, 


29 


CHAPTER II. 

THE STUDENT. 

The porcelain painter was an 
early riser, one who spent the 
sluggard’s hour in the care of his 
little garden, which was one of the 
thriftiest in Meissen. He was 
tilling the cabbages that were to 
furnish the winter’s Sauerkraut,^ 
when the schoolmaster approached, 
uttering a cheery Gut' Morge^i. 
The salutation was returned ere 
the two were face to face, and be- 
fore the hand-grasp was over the 
schoolmaster began, with the eager 
manner of one who had business 
near to his heart, — “ Mein lieber 


30 The Porcelain 

Freund^ wliat is this I hear from 
little Fritz ?’’ 

“ Ach, I am afraid you and the 
house-mother are teaching the bOy 
to be rebellious,” replied the father, 
laying aside his tool with the air 
of one who is preparing to make 
good his words. 

“ I teach your boy to be rebel- 
lious ?” repeated the schoolmaster 
with deliberation in his every word 
as if he doubted his ears. 

“ Have you not counselled him 
to stick to his books ; did you not 
tell him his fingers were never 
made to mould clay or wield a 
painter’s brush? Tell me that, 
Herr Mueller.” The enquiry was 
made with an earnestness that had 
in it a tinge of severity as from 
one who was being trifled with. 

Said the schoolmaster : ‘‘ Of a 


Painter's Son, 31 

trutH, I Have.’^ The words were 
spoken firmly and with the deep 
feeling that betokened a profound 
conviction of the probity of his 
counsel. 

“ It was not kind. You know 
my family is growing ; more 
mouths to fill and broader backs 
to cover, and only the same two 
hands. And I have brought up 
Fritz to follow me in my ways of 
thinking ; and I have always 
wished to see him as good a work- 
man as ever moulded clay or 
painted porcelain. And I need his 
help to carry the load that is get- 
ting heavier every year. Yon, Herr 
Mueller, are putting yourself be- 
tween the boy and his duty to me ; 
and he is so fond of you that had 
you advised him properly, he would 
long since have been an entered 


32 The Porcelain 

apprentice. Is tliat right ; is that 
friendly ?” 

The schoolmaster was deeply 
moved. “6^ mein lieber Freurid^ 
what if I did put myself between 
the boy and his earthly father, if I 
was then showing him his duty to 
his Father in Heaven 

“ Not so fast, Herr Schnllehrer. 
You forget your lesson : what 
means it when that heavenly 
Father says, ^ Honor tby father 
and thy mother?’ ” There was fire 
in his words and the flash of his 
dark eyes showed rising anger. 

The schoolmaster’s matutinal 
visit was made by pre-arrangement 
with the porcelain painter’s wife ; 
she was his ardent ally in abetting 
what her husbsnd called his son’s 
rebellion.” She had watched for 
the pedagogue’s coming, and with 


Painter's Son, 33 

a woman’s wit liad waited for the 
fitting moment to join the group 
in the garden, and this her hus- 
band’s rising voice had indicated. 
As she drew near, the schoolmaster 
gave her his morning salutation 
with grave dignity, adding, “Yon 
have come happily, for my best 
friend is blaming me wrongly.” 

“ Answer my question ; do not 
hide in the bush, Herr Schul- 
meister,” said the father sharply 
and sternly. 

“ House-father,” interposed the 
wife. He turned her quickly : 
“ Stop ! Christina ; / am at school 
now, and I have asked my teacher 
a question which he forgets to 
answer : you know not what it is.” 

She held her peace and the 
schoolmaster made reply. “ What 
said the Christ when he left his 
3 


The Porcelain 


34 

father and mother in Jerusalem 
and they were obliged to turn back 
and seek him : ‘ I go about my 
Father’s business.’ I have studied 
your son as you do the piece of 
porcelain you are about to orna- 
ment. Has it been said that you 
ever put an improper design upon 
anything you have painted? You 
are an artist as well as an artisan, 
and you consider the fitness of the 
vessel for its ornament. I, too, am 
a worker in clay^ and shall I not 
seek for the fitting ornament ? My 
work is for the temple of the liv- 
ing God, and to Him must I make 
answer for any neglect of my duty. 
That you could teach your son the 
cunning of your hands is un- 
doubted ; but that he was not made 
to mould or paint porcelain my 
heart believes and my head knows. 


Paintef^s Son, 35 

He has the divine gift for learning 
languages, and the tasks that are 
as mountains to his schoolmates 
are only ant-hills which he gets 
over with a single stride ; and do 
you think I do not know what all 
this means. A precious stone of 
singular size and beauty is pol- 
ished for the Emperor’s cabinet, 
and a mind of rare promise must be 
cultivated for the glory of God.” 

Amen !” said the mother, her 
eyes brimming with tears, as from 
under her apron she reached out 
her hand to her husband, holding 
in it a rude lamp fashioned from 
unbaked clay : “ O House-father, 
strive not against the will of the 
Lord ! See this.” She placed the 
little lamp in his hand. When 
you forbade the boy to go on with 
his books, he made this lamp that 


The Porcelain 


36 

he might secretly study with the 
oil I stole for him. Had he taken 
a house-lamp you would have 
missed it and found him out. You 
can put out the boy’s lamp, but, O 
House-father, there is a light in 
the boy that only God who gave it 
can put out.” 

There was silence, and the por- 
celain painter stood holding the 
lamp in his hand, and the birds 
sang in the cherry tree, and the 
laughter of little children came 
ringing from the house. 

Perhaps you are wiser than I,” 
said the father, speaking slowly 
and in a subdued tone, “ but the 
little ones, whose laughter you 
hear, must be clothed and fed, and 
I not only cannot spare the help of 
my son : I need the very money 


Painter's Son, 37 

that must be paid for his teach- 
ing.^^ 

“ That is already provided for/’ 
said the teacher eagerly, “ nor is it 
charity, for even now he can assist 
me for as much as his teaching 
would cost, and soon he can earn 
something beside. You see, my 
friend, the God who endowed him 
is also shaping his way.” 

Slowly the father said : “I will 
think of this,” and he parted with 
the rejoicing teacher after a hearty 
shake of the hand. 

As the husband and wife entered 
their dwelling the schoolmaster 
was closing the little gate behind 
him, and a passer by could have 
heard him thinking aloud “ I shall 
see that boy in the pulpit before I 
die !” 

That night the schoolmaster 


38 The Porcelain 

went to Frau Weber’s Wirthshaus 
with unusual eagerness. He knew 
the porcelain painter’s prompti- 
tude, and he felt sure that his de- 
cision would have been made long 
before sunset. He went there 
with joyful expectation, for he saw 
that the father’s heart had been 
deeply stirred at that morning’s 
interview in the garden. 

Alas, for the frailty of poor hu- 
man nature ! After the porcelain 
painter had left the Wirthshaus^ it 
was soon to be seen that the 
schoolmaster was going beyond 
his allowance ; stein followed stein ^ 
until he suddenly jumped to his 
feet and declared that every soul 
in the Wirthshaus must join him 
in singing '‘''Eine feste Burg ist 
unser GottP The hymn was s ang ^ 
to humor him, and in the second 


Painter's Son. 39 

stanza the schoolmaster’s voice 
soared far above the rest. 

“ Mit unsrer Macht ist Nichts gethan, 
Wir sind gar bald verloren: 

Es streit’t fur uns der rechte Mann, 
Den Gott selbst hat erkoren.” 

❖ ❖ ❖ ^ 

A little later, when the last be- 

lated guest had departed, Frau 
Weber’s man-servant was helping 
the gemuethlich schoolmaster to a 
friendly bed in the Wirthshaus. 

❖ ❖ Hi ❖ 

There was but one other trans- 

gression of this nature during all 
the remainder of the schoolmaster’s 
life, and that occurred on the even- 
ing of the day wherein his favor- 
ite pupil was graduated in the 
Fuersten Schule of Meissen. 

Nearly the whole village turned 


40 The Porcelain 

out to hear the porcelain painter^s 
son read his graduation thesis, On 
the Wonderful Construction of the 
Human Hand, 

How the artless villagers did 
stare at one another and at the 
young man who had grown up 
under their very eyes, and yet 
could tell them so much about 
their own hands of which they 
had never dreamed. They had in- 
deed found fingers and thumbs 
exceedingly convenient and useful, 
but until that day they had not 
really known what a hand is. 
The student’s thesis pleased the 
exoteric hearers, who never think 
of reading between the lines ; 
while the esoteric few fancied they 
discerned in it a delicate tribute to 
the well-known skill of the porce- 
lain painter’s hands. 


Painter's Son. 41 

Of this few was Doctor Poerner, 
and his delight surpassed all de- 
scription. On one point, however, 
all were agreed, namely, that the 
porcelain painter had most as- 
suredly given his son “ lessons in 
thinking,” had taught him to look 
beyond the mere surface show and 
to discern occult qualities that are 
so plainly discovered when once 
genius had pointed them out. 

It was on the night of the 
graduation that the Pastor.^ Burgo- 
meister^ and Amstnotar^ led by the 
exuberant Doctor Poerner, left the 
Herren Stuebchen and, gathering 
around the artisans’ table, drank 
the porcelain painter’s health, es- 
pecially thanking him for the 
bringing up of a son who would 
“one day do honor to Meissen.” 
Wineglasses clinked, beer mugs 


42 The Porcelain 

resounded on tlie oaken table, and 
a chorus of Hochs ! went through 
the roof of the Wirthshaus in a 
manner that might startle the 
stars. 

When the toast had been duly 
honored, the porcelain painter 
arose. His face had a strange 
seriousness, and his voice sounded 
as if it came to him from 
afar. ^'‘Meine Herren : the praise 
is not mine. I would have made 
a horn spoon of that from which 
he,” and he fixed his eyes upon 
the schoolmaster, “ has produced a 
sword handle for the King.” And 
then he impressively related the 
long -past interview with the 
schoolmaster in the garden. 
“Never,” he continued, “can I 
forget his words: ‘I, too, am a 
worker in clay^ and shall I not 


Painter* s Son. 


43 


seek tke fitting ornament? My 
work is for the temple of the living 
God, and to Him must I give an- 
swer for any neglect of my duty.’ ” 
Then upspoke the wealthy Bur- 
gomeister, addressing himself to 
the astonished schoolmaster : 
‘‘ Herr Mueller, you are an honor 
to Meissen. Blessed is he that 
magnifieth his calling. Frau 
Weber, all these guests will drink 
with me the health of our faithful 
Schulemeister, and in your best 
wine.” p 

The health was d rank with fer- 
vor, and the overwhelmed school- 
master attempted to make reply 
but his tongue clave to the roof of 
his mouth, and he could only 
stammer in helpless confusion. 

“ More wine !” shouted the black- 


44 


The Porcelain 


smith. “ He can only sometimes 
talk, but always drink.” 

The Burgomeister clapped his 
hands at this sally and gave order 
for unlimited wine. 

“ Wein auf bier das rath ich dir.” 

So runs the rhyme ; but, alas ! 
the overjoyed Schulemeister was 
again put to bed in the Wifths- 
kaus. 

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ 

When the autumn came the por- 
celain painter’s son started for 
Leipsic to prepare himself for the 
medical profession. He had twenty 
thalers in his pocket his whole 
and only patrimony ; but he had 
in his heart principles that would 
bloom perennially, and on his 
head a father’s blessing; and with 
him went a mother’s prayers. 


Painter's Son, 


45 


Nor had Dr. Poerner forgotten 
him. The world is before him, 
and it is “ a mad world, my 
masters.^’ 


46 


The Porcelain 


CHAPTER III. 

THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS RENUN- 
CIATION. 

‘‘ I can myself testify that while 
I was at Leipsic I honestly tried 
to follow my father’s injunction 
neither to play a merely passive 
part in the matter of learning. 
Neither did I neglect exercise and 
fresh air, in order to preserve that 
strength of body by which alone 
mental exertion can be sustained.'’ 
This is a glimpse from a retrospect 
taken when the seamy side of life 
was safely passed; but the testi- 
mony is too modestly stated. With 
his whole fortune of twenty thalers 
in his pocket, and that pitiful pit- 


Painterh Son. 47 

tance mucli lessened before lie bad 
reached his destination, he who 
was to attend lectures and provide 
clothing, food and lodgings for 
himself must either find a Fortu- 
natus’ purse or make one. 

But his graduation thesis had so 
pleased Doctor Poerner, Counsellor 
of Mines at Meissen, that he had 
written to the Faculty at Leipsic, 
telling them of the promise that 
lay unfolded in the poor student, 
and everyone of the professors re- 
mitted his fee. This was a precious 
lift, and the student proved his 
worthiness by the most unremit- 
ting attendance upon their lec- 
tures. He also taught languages, 
and made translations for the 
booksellers: Leipsic being even 
then the chief book mart in Ger- 
many. His zeal and industry were 


The Porcelain 


48 

such that he often worked through- 
out the night. Without robust 
health and one of the best of C9U- 
stitutions he could never have 
withstood such wearing toil. 

After two years of study at 
Leipsic he went to Vienna for the 
sake of that hospital experience 
which was not then to be had at 
the former place. There his ex- 
emplary conduct won for him the 
esteem and friendship of the Phy- 
sician in Ordinary to the Emperor ; 
and of whom the grateful student 
wrote, in happier days that were 
still far off, ‘‘ Freiherr von Quarin 
singled me out, loved me and 
taught me as if I were his sole 
pupil in Vienna, and even more 
than that ; and all without expect- 
ing any pecuniary from me.” We 
are not obliged to take only the 


Painter^ s Son. 49 

grateful ^student’s word for this — 
Professor Bischoff also has writen : 
“ Freiherr von Quarin bestowed on 
him his special friendship.” It is 
also well known that this favorite 
student was the only one whom von 
Quarin took with him on his visits 
to his private patients. And later 
on, when his slender earnings were 
insufficient to enable him to con- 
tinue his studies for the obtaining 
of his diploma, it was still von 
Quarin whose good word secured 
for the porcelain painter’s son the 
position of resident physician at 
Hermannstadt, under the patron- 
age of Baron von Bruckenthal, of 
whose extensive library he also 
took charge. No, your Excel- 
lency ; not yet a graduate, but fully 
competent for the professional re- 
sponsibilities of the physician; 
4 


The Porcelain 


50 

and your Excellency will also find 
him a scholar, a fine linguist, and 
one not a stranger to the value 
and uses of a library.” 

Twenty-one months’ service in 
this field enabled him to earn suffi- 
cient to go to Erlangen and take 
his degree. 

Now the world is before him ; as 
a duly qualified physician he can 
choose his abiding place. Softly ! 
the world is the oyster of only him 
who can open it. 

The heart of the porcelain 
painter’s son hungered for Sax- 
ony, as he says only a Cur Saxon 
can, and he settled himself for 
practice in the little town of Hett- 
stadt, but only to find, after a nine 
months’ sojourn, that it had little 
need for a physician. He then re- 
moved to Dessau, where he found 


Painter's Son. 51 

some patronage and, what was bet- 
ter, a wife. The largest “ old 
school ” dose he ever took was a 
druggist’s daughter; and in his 
circumstances it must have been 
that two blankets are better than 
one which determined the bold 
step for the impecunious physi- 
cian. Alas ! the wife and the sup- 
plementary blanket were about all 
that he got in stony Dessau ; and 
wives must be fed and blankets 
wear out, and the good folk of 
Dessau are so terribly healthy ! 

At the end of the first year of 
his marriage he was appointed Dis- 
trict Physician at Gommern, in 
which position he will receive the 
Government’s stipendium as an 
official. Bravo ! the oyster is open- 
ing, surely opening ! Courage, and 
patch the thin blankets ! The 


52 


The Porcelain 


young wife shared His delight to the 
full, and to Gommern the couple 
went. Never before had there been 
a physician in that place ; he had 
a fresh field and all to himself. 
Surely, his prospects were rosier 
than even the blushing dawn of his 
double-blanketed wedding-day ! 

Three years this couple existed 
in Gommern, but how they only 
know, for the State stipend was 
but a pittance, and not even the 
apothecary father-in-law could coin 
the gold in stony Gommern to 
help them : the daughter and her 
blanket being all that he conld 
bestow. 

Lack practice? Bless you! he 
never lacked practice ; he was busy 
enough to satisfy even so earnest 
a man as he. He was gathering 
precious experience every day ; he 


Painter's Son, 


53 


was putting drugs to the test, and 
in after years he naively admitted 
that his patients would have come 
off better had he given them noth- 
ing — and that is more than true of 
much of the therapeutics of the 
lecture room and the laboratory 
to-day. Strange as it may seem, 
breeding bacteria is a costly pas- 
time for even a philosopher ; nam- 
ing them affords harmless occupa- 
tion for bookmakers, and such 
breeding and christening is called 
science.^’ Now there is both the 
science and the art of Medicine ; 
let the philosophers have their fill 
of science, but in God’s name ! let 
the sick have the art. They do 
not need your “ cultures ; ” they 
are asking, and largely in vain, 
for destructions,” and that not of 
themselves I 


54 The Porcelain 

The physician, be it known, has 
to deal with four species of 
patients ; the rich and the poor. 
But that is only two varieties! 
Aye, but the poor are subdivisible : 
there are “ the Lord’s poor, the 
devil’s poor, and the poor devils.” 
Before leaving Gommern the fam- 
ishing physician approached one 
of the first class in this category, 
a well-to-do farmer, and asked him 
frankly why he had never patron- 
ized him. The reply is worth 
preserving: ‘^Herr Doktor, we 
people have lived in Gommern 
four hundred years without one of 
your kind, and we cannot play 
foolish now for your sake. If you 
could do anything for a sick sheep, 
we might find use for you.” 

The disgusted District Physi- 
cian sought a place where sheep 


Painter's Son, 55 

were not supreme. He Hired a 
Fuhrwerk,, packed into it His 
HouseHold goods, wife and cHildren 
— for, someHow, cHildren come 
wHetHer practice pays or not — and 
sHaking off tHe dust of His feet as 
a testimony against all swine, de- 
parted from Gommern. 

O implacable Misfortune, tHou 
wHo deligHtest in doubling tHe 
misery of tHose on wHom once 
Fate Has frowned, wHy art tHou so 
relentless, wHy dost tHou sHower 
tHy fiery darts as well upon tHe 
just as tHe unjust, on gray-Haired 
sire and Helpless babe alike ? 
Doth the old, old Weltschmerz need 
aught from thee ! 

Whilst journeying from Gom- 
mem a bad place in the Highway 
caused the Fuhrwerk to overturn 
and tumble down a steep declivity 


56 The Porcelain 

until it rested in a brook swollen 
by tbe rain that had undermined 
the road. An infant son was ’so 
severely injured that he shortly 
after died ; an older daughter 
broke her arm, and as if this were 
not enough, his household effects 
were sadly damaged by the water. 
Some peasants helped the unfor- 
tunates to the nearest village ; and 
when the fractured arm was healed 
the father’s slender purse grinned 
gauntly in his face. 

It is a sordid picture bui; it is 
the truth. In the mysterious or- 
derings of Providence this disci- 
pline was needful for the develop- 
ing of even so upright a man as 
the porcelain painter’s son. But, 
although he had not been able to 
emerge from the poverty in which 
he was born, he still had a robust 


Painter's Son. 


57 


body, a brave heart, and the pa- 
tience and the indomitable courage 
that are akin to these ~ and these 
must sustain him when there 
comes to him the still darker dis- 
pensation. 

If my reader has been led to re- 
gard this man as merely an un- 
successful practitioner he must rid 
himself of that most erroneous 
conception. He was, instead, that 
most successful of all practitioners 
— a thinking one ! In the unre- 
mnnerative years that he had lived 
he not only faithfully followed up 
his father’s ^‘lessons in thinking,” 
but he had also carefully hus- 
banded, rigidly scrutinized and 
unfalteringly questioned every day 
of his professional life ; and all this 
was to bear precious fruit, al- 
though as yet not even the bud 


58 The Porcelain 

could be seen. In the several in- 
significant villages wherein he had 
valiantly struggled for a bare sub- 
sistence, he had nevertheless writ- 
ten some books that were not 
unheeded in their day, and are 
noteworthy even to-day. His con- 
tributions 'to chemistry had won 
for him the encomiums of Berze- 
lius, and Huf eland ranked the 
struggling physician among the 
very first of his profession in 
Germany. ^^2CCLV2C\A^der Einzige^ 
termed him that ‘‘ double-headed 
prodigy of learning and philoso- 
phy,” — and yet this learning and 
philosophy were destined to bring 
him to the very brink of despair. 
O ye who would go smoothly 
through life, swim with the tide, 
spread your sail to catch the 
“trade winds;” ask no trouble- 


Painter's Son, 


59 


some questions; let others do the 
deep-thinking, and the challenging 
of the old beliefs: then shall you 
never behold the bottom of your 
meal tub grinning at your green- 
ness. 

The porcelain painter’s son had 
already asked too many questions, 
and still each day brought a new- 
one, deeper-reaching and more per- 
plexing. In Gommern, in sheep- 
loving Gommem, he had owned to 
himself that the sick would really 
have done better had they taken 
no medicine whatever : yet he was 
fully abreast with the so-called 
science of his day. Huf eland’s 
famous Journal had no contributor 
whose papers were more warmly 
welcomed. But his questions led 
him deeper and deeper, while day 
after day his doubts grew stronger 


6o 


The Porcelain 


and stronger, and in vain did lie 
say to himself : “ It is not I who am 
at fault ; it is the art of Medicine 
that is wrong.” Daily this unwel- 
come conviction deepened, until at 
last he asked himself : “ If I think 
that the sick will fare better with- 
out our hap-hazard medicines — 
and in my - heart I do so think — 
why do I practise ? Am I honest 
in so doing? I know that I can 
prescribe as skillfully as the best 
of those who now give medicine ; 
but if I am convinced that the sick 
will do better ivith no medicine at 
all — God help me ! I will practice 
no more !” 

From the hour of his renuncia- 
tion he turned to Chemistry, and 
he has left an enviable name in the 
history of that science ; he also 
worked night and day as a trans- 


Painter^ s Son. 6i 

lator for his old friends the book- 
sellers. But with all his toil, and 
he could, indeed, toil., the publish- 
ers’ pittance was small, and even 
German frugality was taxed be- 
yond its possibilities. O genius of 
Poverty, help this struggling pair 
with every honest device that 
Necessity can conceive ; help the 
good house-mother’s needle to out- 
do the cunning of Penelope so that 
she may indeed 

‘ ‘ Gar auld claes luik amaist as weel as 
new.” 

Alas ! one may cheat the back, 
but the belly is inexorable ; and 
the cry of a famishing child — 
merciful God, is that ever heard in 
Heaven ! 

One day his faithful wife’s face 
betrayed her ; she was in the depth 


62 


The Porcelain 


of a quandary ; her husband saw 
this, and questioned her. 

“Well, House-father, our clothes, 
although they are poor, must not 
also be dirty : I want to wash them 
and I have no soap.’’ 

He turned to look at her, drop- 
ping his pen, and he could but see 
that the rosy cheeks, that won him 
in those early days at Dessau, 
were worn and faded. He sprang 
from his table and kissed her. 
“ No soap ? Well, I must teach 
you a trick; and as I must also 
show you how it is done, I will 
wash the clothes, and without 
soap.” 

His little son, Fritz, looked on 
with a pair of wondering eyes, and 
soon called his sister from her play 
to see the grave House-father bare- 
armed at the washtub. 


Painter's Son, 


63 

Despite the remonstrance of the 
wife and her expostulation that 
for him ,to do her work would dis- 
grace her as a reputable Hausfrau, 
he performed the feat of washing 
the clothes without soap — using 
potatoes because they were so 
much cheaper. 

The thin, worn cheeks were not 
forgotten, and until the coming of 
better days one of the most learned 
physicians of Germany assisted in 
doing the family washing. 

And now, brave heart, be 
stronger still, for there is yet a 
cup of bitterness that shall search 
thee still more sorely. 

They were living, oh, how fru- 
gally, on the small earnings of the 
father’s pen ; their only bread the 
black, barley loaf of the peasant, 
and that there might be no words 


The Porcelain 


64 

of complaint about tbe equitable 
sharing of it, tbe father dealt^it 
out by weight, each receiving the 
portion due. One day a little 
daughter, who had long been 
drooping, fell seriously ill. The 
poor sufferer could not eat, but she 
piously treasured up her daily por- 
tion of black bread against the 
time of her recovery, when the ac- 
cumulated hoard would enable her 
to enjoy, oh, such a boutiful meal; 
and her eye lit up as she saw her 
hoard increasing. 

Perhaps it was in a dream that 
the Messenger told his errand, for 
the child knew her doom ; so one 
day she called her favorite sister 
to her and solemnly bequeathed to 
her the dry black crusts, telling 
her that she herself should never 
recover to eat them. 


Painter's Son, 65 

Bear up, brave heart ; the utter- 
most bitterness of thy renuncia- 
tion is reached ; the night is dark ; 
there shines no star, but be stead- 
fast to duty : lose not sight of that. 
Bear up : 

“ God’s in His heaven; 

All’s right with the world.” 


5 


66 


The Porcelain 


CHAPTER IV. 

THE PHILOSOPHER AND HIS 
REWARD. 

In Medicine, the fame of Will- 
iam Cullen was second only to 
that of Hermann Boerhaave, and 
when the porcelain painter’s son 
was wearing the thorn-crown of 
his renunciation the Scottish pro- 
fessor was the brightest luminary 
in the firmament of the medical 
world. One day, fresh from the 
Edinburgh press, there came his 
famous “Treatise of The Materia 
Medica,” and the enterprising 
German publisher put it at once 
into the hands of his hack for 
translation. 


Painief^s Son, 67 

Now, despite the privations that 
had followed his renunciation of 
the practice of Medicine, the porce- 
lain painter’s son had kept up his 
habit of thinking, and whilst he 
was translating the Scottish phy- 
sician’s text there came to him a 
ray of light in the darkness. It 
was, indeed, the dawning of a 
brighter day for Medicine than 
any of which he had ever dared to 
dream. 

How that strange thought 
haunted him ; he could not dismiss 
it, and yet it was distracting his 
attention from the text he was to 
translate. He had not half finished 
his daily stint, and his children’s 
voices reminded him that they 
must be fed; but work he could not, 
that one thought had laid a spell 
on him. With a sigh he laid aside 


68 


The Porcelain 


his pen and went forth into the 
fields, but nature had lost her 
charm for him, because that im- 
portunate thought followed him 
like his own shadow. 

This thought came to him in the 
shape of a question, and this ques- 
tion challenged him to experiment. 
He experiment ! He play the 
leisurely philosopher when he had 
barely time enough to provide a 
slender living for his family ! But 
he found no peace ; experiment he 
must and experiment he did. O 
Spirit of the long-dead porcelain 
painter, be near to him whom thou 
didst teach to think; guard him 
from error, clarify his sight, direct 
his steps, for he has reached the 
parting of the ways and the issues 
thereof are those of life and of 
death ! 


Painter^s Son, 


69 

The thought that had so dis- 
turbed the porcelain painter^s son 
had in it both a question and a 
conjecture; and his first experi- 
ment had answered the question 
by confirming the significant con- 
jecture. For him this was not 
enough. He had all the sanity of 
Genius, and he knew that the 
value of a single instance must 
be proven to be not an exceptional 
quantity but an invariable ; it must 
be the constant result of law, not 
the chance product of accident. 
How he was tempted to wholly 
neglect the daily task that brought 
him bread in his eagerness to fol- 
low the clue that would lead him 
— whither ? He did not know, nor 
did it then enter into his fondest 
imaginations to conceive ; but he 
remembered those heroic student 


70 The Porcelain 

days of strenuous endeavor in 
Leipsic, and he lived a double life 
of translating and experimenting. 

O Joy ! after each successive ex- 
periment there came again, and 
again, and again, ever the same, 
the unvarying result. He con- 
tinued piling experiment upon ex- 
periment; getting from eacb new 
experiment the positive confirma- 
tion of the first. Heaven-inspired 
conjecture, until it seemed as if 
his list of positive affirmations had 
been lengthened unto superfluity. 
Then he turned from his experi- 
ments to formulate the thought 
that had disturbed him when be 
was laboring over the pages of 
Cullen's Materia Medica^ and the 
formula took on this shape : 

Any substance that relieves dis- 
eased conditions will produce simi- 


Painter's Son. 


71 

lar conditions when taken in suita- 
ble quantities and for a sufficient 
period of time by those in health ; 
and it is this property in drugs that 
makes them medicines. 

He was ready to distrust his own 
formula, for was he not the first of 
woman born to frame it ? But was 
it not buttressed by hundreds of 
careful experiments, and had he 
not invariably received the self- 
same reply whenever he had inter- 
rogated Nature with the Heaven- 
sent clue in his hand ? 

He had also the modesty of 
genius, and he asked himself if it 
could be possible that he alone of 
all the race had discerned the new 
truth ; whereupon he began to ran- 
sack the records of Medicine from 
the earliest period. Thanks to 
Herr Mueller, the faithful school- 


72 The Porcelain 

master of Meissen, who had long 
years before seen that the -porcelain 
painter’s son had “ the divine gift 
of tongues,” and had made a strug- 
gle that this gift might not be de- 
spised and rejected : thanks to his 
insight, for his pupil was now en- 
abled by his linguistic attainments 
to make an exhaustive search 
throughout the whole realm of 
medical literature. On reading 
the records he soon found that 
Jewish, Arabian, Greek and Roman 
physicians had reported cure after 
cure which had been accomplished 
by the nse of the very same drugs 
that had produced in him the like- 
ness of those recorded diseases 
when he had experimented upon 
himself, his family and his friends 
with the self-same drugs. Better 
even than this, he found that Hip- 


Painter's Son, 


73 


pocrates, “ the divine old man of 
Cos,” had sanctioned a method of 
practice based upon the very 
formula which he himself had 
reached by the strictest Baconian 
investigation. He found, too, that 
Haller had recommended experi- 
ments with drugs upon the healthy 
body, “ in corpore sano,” in order 
to determine the actual effects of 
these agents. But Haller had 
also taught that it was then neces- 
sary to experiment again with the 
same drugs upon the sick, “ in 
corpore vile,” in order to learn what 
the same drugs would do in dis- 
ease. As a drug cannot possibly 
act the same in a healthy body and 
in one that is diseased, because the 
conditions under which the experi- 
ment is made with it are not the 
same or even similar, of what use. 


74 


The Porcelain 


then, is the Hallerian experiment 
upon the healthy body? Suppose 
that Haller had learned by experi- 
ment with a hitherto unknown 
drug upon a healthy man that it 
acted by making him vomit ; what 
value had that fact for a system 
of therapeutics whose armamentar- 
ium was already rich in emetics ? 
But suppose that an experiment 
upoti a healthy man with the 
new emetic showed the physician 
in just what kind of an attack of 
vomiting^ occurring in a sick man^ 
that very drug would relieve the 
sufferer “quickly, safely, and 
pleasantly?’’ Then, indeed, is 
there sense in and need for the 
experiment upon the healthy man. 
In fact, in this very feature alone 
and only is there any philosophi- 
cal justification for the experiment 


Painter's Son. 75 

upon the healthy : why else should 
a person in health be put to such 
discomfort ? The pseudo-science 
that declares otherwise is a delu- 
sion and a sham, or in the words 
of one of its own disgusted disci- 
ples, such a system of therapeu- 
tics is “ the withered branch of 
Medicine.’’ 

The porcelain painter’s son 
found, to his own surprise, that he 
had of a certainty gone beyond all 
the previous generations of men in 
the realm of rational therapeutics. 
He had stripped the art of its per- 
plexing nncertainties because he 
had based the proper exercise of it 
upon a law of Nature. He had 
learned the alphabet of Nature, 
and with it he could read her 
therapeutic method. And he, first 
of all men, said to the world : 


76 


The Porcelain 


You can learn what any medi- 
cinal substance is capable of doing 
in the human organism by adminis- 
tering it^ in suitable doses and for 
a sufficient period of time^ to per- 
sons in health. 

It will then evince its properties 
by producing symptoms,^ or signs f 
of distress that were not felt before 
taking it ; and it is this property of 
causing symptoms that makes it a 
remedy for them when they occur as 
disease. 

Why ? Because that very drug 
will dissipate such symptoms in the 
sick as it is capable of causing in 
the well. 

How do we know this ? Firsts 
by experiments with this drug upon 
the healthy alone — which experi- 
ments will show what symptoms 
that drug is capable of occasion- 


Painter's Son. 77 

ifig — and.^ secondly by administer- 
ing that very drug to the sick pre- 
senting similar symptoms., which it 
will abolish in every case of curable 
disease. 

This last procedure is not “ an 
experiment upon the body in dis- 
ease P it is., instead, a demonstra- 
tion of Nature'' s law that LIKE 
IS TO BE TREATED BY 
LIKE. 

If this is pronounced only- 
theory by some caviler, it still 
has this somewhat unusual merit 
amongst theories, as theories go, 
namely, — it can be tested by pre- 
cise experiment and thereby ex- 
posed, if false. It differs from all 
other therapeutic systems in that 
it challenges such a refutation 
from foe and friend alike. “ This 
doctrine appeals not only chiefly, 


The Porcelain 


78 

but solely^ to the verdict of experi- 
ence — ^ repeat the experiments/ it 
cries aloud, ‘ repeat them carefully 
and accurately, and you will find 
the doctrine confirmed at every 
step ’ — and it does what no medical 
doctrine ever did or could do, it 
insists upon being ^ judged by the 
result.’ ” 

The boy who was taught to 
think is a Pontifex who could not, 
indeed, bridge the universal grave, 
but he has erected a Pons asinorum 
impassable forever to pseudo-sci- 
ence. 

With this new light upon his 
path the porcelain painter’s son 
resumed the practice of Medicine. 
His guide to the treatment of any 
disease being first to get all the 
symptoms, or “ signs,” of it by 
every possible method of examina- 


Painter^ s Son. 79 

tion known to the science of Medi- 
cine ; his further process there- 
upon to find what drug produced 
a similar set of “ signs,” — then, 
upon administering that drug, in 
justa dosi^ recovery followed in ac- 
cordance with Nature’s law of cure. 

As he had discovered what symp- 
toms each drug would produce by 
its action, singly., upon the human 
organism in health — for, if he 
mixed drugs in such an experi- 
ment, how could he learn what 
particular symptoms each ingredi- 
ent produced ? — it follows that he 
gave each drug singly in the dis- 
ease whose total symptoms most 
closely resembled the total of 
effects it produced in the healthy 
experimenter. This, too, is not the 
device of a theorist ; it springs 
directly from the very therapeutic 


8o 


The Porcelain 


law which selects a given drug 
from all other drugs for a given 
congeries of symptoms, on account 
of the nearness of its similitude. 

Having discovered the thera- 
peutic law by experiment, and 
being confined by it to a single 
remedy in prescribing, it still re- 
mained for experiment to deter- 
mine if the quantity of the dose is 
a matter of indifference. On re- 
suming the practice of Medicine 
under the guidance of the newly- 
discovered therapeutic law the por- 
celain painter’s son at first admin- 
istered such doses, in quantity, as 
were given by his fellow physi- 
cians of the method of practice 
that he had renounced ; but he 
thereupon found that as a drug 
selected from the similarity of its 
action to that of the morbific cause 


Painter's Son, 8i 

of the disease for which it was 
being given, aggravated, or in- 
tensified, the very symptoms for 
which it had been given, it was, 
then, a matter of necessity that the 
quantity, or, as he termed it, the 
potency of the dose should be di- 
minished. This reduction he soon 
began to make ; and the same ex- 
perience that obliged him to make 
the first reduction in the quantity, 
or potency of the dose, remained 
to denote the limit to which that 
reduction of the dose should be 
carried. In this, likewise, he was 
influenced by theory. This step 
was also the outcome of experi- 
ence ; so that both the single 
remedy and the diminished dose 
are direct derivatives from the law 
of similars and essentials for the 


6 


82 The Porcelain 

practice of Medicine under this 
law. 

So far the man who had learned 
to think had followed the Baconian 
path, and thus far his conclusions 
are impregnable. He could have 
burned every line that he had 
written in exposition of his dis- 
covery and still prove the truth of 
this therapeutic law by the litera- 
ture of the very school that he had 
abjured ; and if its doubting dis- 
ciples denied the records of their 
own teachers, he could still chal- 
lenge them to disprove the newly- 
discovered therapeutic law by such 
experiments as had led him to its 
discovery. Such a refutal can 
never be accomplished, because 
before the creation of man the fiat 
of the Eternal had gone forth 
framing the laws that were to 


Painterh Son, 83 

govern tHe universe, and so long 
as the universe is governed by law 
the therapeutic truth that magis 
venenum magis remedium est must 
remain as fixed as gravity itself. 
To find the remedy in the poison 
is possible only under and by the 
guidance of the law of similars : 
it matters neither how loudly the 
heathen rage nor how long the 
people imagine a vain thing. 

The porcelain painter’s son was 
granted not only a far-off Pisgah 
vision of the Promised Land ; he 
was also permitted to labor therein 
and to partake in all honor of the 
fruit of his long toil. Those years 
of storm and stress, so sore in the 
time of fiery trial, so grievous to 
the flesh, had in them the blessing 
that was “ for the healing of the 
nations.” 


84 The Porcelain 

Ripe in years, richly rewarded 
with earthly goods, loved by the 
afflicted and revered by the world’s 
wisest and best, he found his ex- 
ceeding great reward. And while 
he sat in the vineyard, in the cool 
of the evening, there came to him 
the messenger of the Master of the 
Vineyard: and he arose and fol- 
lowed him. 


Painter* s Son, 


85 


‘‘UNDER WHICH KING, 
BEZONIAN?” 

“ Bezonian. V rom bisogno: a new levied 
soldier, such as comes needy to the 
wars. ” — Florio. 

The request of the faculty that 
I would lift up my voice once more 
in this familiar place was accepted 
promptly, as Dr. Dewey can testify; 
and this not that I am particularly 
fond of hearing my own mouth. 
I have heard that so long (and so 
have my friends) that it is getting 
monotonous. My friends are too 
polite to tell me so ; but I know it 
“just the same.” Moreover, there 

A lecture delivered, by request of the faculty, 
in the amphitheatre of the first Homoeopathic 
Hospital, at Ann Arbor, Michigan, on the even- 
ing of April 13th. 


86 


The Porcelain 


is tlie quiet evening at home, the 
weary feet in the easy ofd slippers ; 
the faithful pipe (almost the only 
friend that never “ goes back ” on 
us), the favorite books, whose charm 
grows stronger and dearer from 
the knowing that each reading is 
bringing one nearer and nearer to 
the last : all these combine to keep 
a spavined and wind-broken ex- 
professor away from places like 
this. Nevertheless, at the call, I 
at once agreed to come. Why? 
That is just exactly what I am 
going to try and tell you. 

I am obliged to be somewhat 
auto-biographic, for I am going to 
deal with history of which I am a 
small part. This is why you must 
pardon so much of the “ I ” as will 
of necessity enter into this talk. 

Only once before have I spoken 


Painter^ s Son. 87 

in this very room. The occasion 
was the inauguration of the first 
Homoeopathic Hospital. To me, 
that was an impressive occasion; 
to-night it is even a solemn one. 
Then I looked into friendly faces 
that have long since gone as we 
must all go. Well do I remember 
just where they sat, those faithful 
old members of the Homoeopathic 
Hospital Association. Believe me, 
you who are here to-night, I speak 
as one talking to the sacred dead. 
I may fall into error, for that is 
human, but not for all that I have 
will I knowingly utter one word 
which from its insincerity could 
disturb them where they are noiv. 
This is not the place for rancor; it 
is not the time for reproach: the 
utmost that can be allowed is re- 
proof for wrong-doing, mis-doing. 


88 The Porcelain 

not doing, — this and the friendly 
warning of the first and oldest 
worker in this field. 

In the twenty-three years that 
this college has existed there have 
been many changes. This is stale 
news as regards the college ; hut it is 
not the college alone that I have in 
mind. I mean the outside changes 
that affect not only colleges but all 
in them and the great majority out 
of them. Civilization, as we de- 
light to call it, has its mumps, and 
its measles — diseases incident to 
certain periods. Civilization is 
prone to delirium: what else was 
the Salem Witchcraft? Civiliza- 
tion has also its intervals of serene 
lucidity, and of storm and stress 
through which and by which the 
race levels a new lift and leaves 
the fabled anthropoid ancestor 


Painter's Son. 89 

farther and farther in the slimy 
depths of that Christless hypoth- 
esis. These are the changes I 
mean ; and how strikingly and 
startlingly History reveals them! 
At times we need a long perspective 
to discern them, and this History 
affords. Contrast the England of 
Cromwell with that which Charles 
the Second directed : the one a con- 
venticle resounding with psalm and 
player; the other a brothel of 
ribaldry and all unspeakable 
abominations. What an oscillation 
from one extreme to the other, 
from the supernal splendors of 
Milton’s divine Epic to the unutter- 
able lecherous leprosy of Wych- 
erley’s comedies. 

Writers ascribe these mysterious 
transitions to an occult Zeit-geist., 
Time-spirit, Spirit of the Age. 


90 The Porcelain 

Its influence it is that inaugurates 
now a “ truce of God ” and now a 
saturnalia as lurid and infernal as 
tlie French Revolution. In the 
dark days when ‘‘the heathen rage 
and the people imagine a vain 
thing” the faint of heart despair: 
as if the Eternal had fallen short 
of His purpose, as if Omnipotence 
were baffled ! 

It is “ through the shadow of 
the globe we sweep into the 
younger day.” The astronomical 
fact is also the eternal fact behind 
and beyond all sublunary things. 
We may not question the Eternahs 
plan, we dare not interrogate His 
purpose. Duty remains ; duty in 
sunshine, duty in storm ; duty in 
the darkest night, — and to each 
comes the fateful challenge : 
“ Under which kingf'^'^ 


Painter's Son, 91 

The now-prevailing Zeit~geist is 
a questioning spirit, a doubting 
spirit, a mocking spirit, and it 
delights to masquerade disguised 
as Science. Science is “ knowing,” 
and the Spirit of the Age assumes 
the name though it does not know 
— it only itches to know. Its field 
of enquiry is the Natural, it does 
not recognize the Supernatural. 
It does not believe there is any- 
thing above and beyond sense. It 
does not know that there is not ; 
and yet it is science and science is 
“knowing.” It is a pretender in 
all that pertains to the super- 
natural ; it is also a pompous pre- 
tense and braggart in much that 
pertains to the Natural as dis- 
tinguished from the Supernatural. 
Such is the Spirit of the Age in 
which we live ; a questioning spirit. 


92 The Porcelain 

a doubting spirit, a mocking spirit, 
an irreverent spirit. To it nothing 
is sacred, not even the truth ; for 
it is a falsity itself in that it 
assumes to know that which it 
does not know. Chemistry, for 
its purpose, is called a precise 
science ; yet Chemistry is playing 
the j uggler with hypothetical 
“ atoms.’^ Optics is an experi- 
mental and is also called a precise 
science ; yet Optics is spinning 
cobwebs from hypothetical un- 
dulations ” in an equally hypo- 
thetical ether.’ ^ Mathematics 
itself, the most precise of all 
sciences, at last reaches a sphere 
wherein its conclusions are lame 
and impotent contradictions. Thus 
far shalt thou go and no farther ’’ is 
the edict pronounced to the intel- 
lect, and that by no mortal Canute. 


Painter^ s Son. 


93 

For the science that recognizes 
the pride-purging limitations, the 
science which led Newton to com- 
pare himself with a child that has 
picked up a single pebble on the 
shore of a limitless ocean — the 
“ knowing” that it knows so little 
— for this I have only reverence. 
But the science that is not clothed 
upon with humility is an arrogant 
mockery, a specious pretense. It 
is not the science for which men 
revere the Newtons and the Fara- 
days: at its best it is knowledge 
without wisdom and therefore with- 
out humility. It is a foolish suck- 
ling that cries for the moon. 
Pseudo-science is making night 
hideous with that very cry. 

Man and the monkey have one 
trait in common: both are imi- 
tators. We do not, indeed, know 


94 The Porcelain 

that the monkeys are stuck up 
on this account; but ni,any men 
are certainly proud of their pro- 
ficience in this line. Hence the 
popularity of the “ fad.’^ What is 
a fad but the device of one mon- 
key imitated by others ? Suppose 
“ science ” is made a fad : will it be 
obliged to offer a premium for 
science-aping Simians ? It does not 
so appear. Many men are nothing if 
they are not “scientific” and worse 
than nothing when they are. Be- 
cause some other men are scientific 
they would be considered so. 

Understand me now beyond all 
chance of mis-conception : I am 
not referring to the science repre- 
sented by a Newton and a Fara- 
day, the Science that has the meek- 
ness of humility, the Knowing that 
feels the Illimitable. I mean the 


Painter^ s Son. 


95 

science that falsely assumes the 
name, the arrogant science ; and 
the special imitators to whom I 
refer — the tailless monkeys — are 
those whose assumptions are 
doubly false, because they affect 
this miserable “ science ’’ without 
even that knowledge of it which 
might, perhaps, palliate so pitiful an 
affectation. These are what might 
be called the /.y^^^/<9-pseudo-scien- 
tific ; these display all the arro- 
gance of its assumptions without 
possessing what little of real 
“ knowing it may have. These 
are dreaded by all real scientists 
because like the bull in the china- 
shop, they can only make havoc 
with the stock in trade — they can 
only “ smash things.” Emerson 
has said : “ The grossest ignorance 


The Porcelain 


96 

does not disgust like this ignorant 
knowingness.’’ 

What if any number of such 
“ scientists ” should point the pop- 
guns of their “science” against 
the only system of Therapeutics 
that has law for its basis, law for 
its application, law for the experi- 
ment upon the healthy in the 
laboratory, law for the demonstra- 
tion upon the diseased in the hos- 
pital. Suppose the noise of these 
innumerable little popguns were 
such, so incessant, so importunate, 
so indefatigably clamorous, that it 
distracted the student’s attention 
from everything else. Suppose it 
dinned the ears of the practitioner 
at each bedside until he forgot 
everything else. Suppose it be- 
witched learned editors as the pied 
piper of Hamlin’s tune did the 


Painter's Son. 


97 

other vermin. Suppose it usurped 
the ears of the teachers in the col- 
leges until they, the gowned 
apostles of the Faith, began to 
shoot their own little popguns and 
add to the clamor. Were not all this 
an enviable state of affairs ! Thanks 
to the doubting, unbelieving, mock- 
ing, irreverent Zeit-geist and the 
‘‘ pure cussedness ” of human- 
nature, such is the state of things 
to-day. The so-called ‘‘ homoeo- 
pathic ” medical student is insensi- 
ble of the infinite riches of his in- 
heritance as a student of Homce- 
opathy ; the homoeopathic prac- 
titioner is irresolute, his feet are 
not fixed on the bed rock that un- 
derlies his therapeutic system, but 
his hands are dirty with coal tar 
products that are a reproach to 
Therapeutics as a science, and he 
7 


gS The Porcelain 

himself is blown hither and thither 
by every varying wind of doctrine ; 
the editors — well, Homoeopathy 
to-day has some editors, she has 
also editors “ to burn ” — the bone- 
less sardines of the sanctum ; the 
professors — well, I want to return 
in safety to my family to-night, so 
‘‘ mum is the word 

Professors, editors, practitioners, 
students I rejoice that such is the 
state of things, for it is the ex- 
tremest oscillation of the pendulum 
to the sinister end of the arc, and 
not all the powers of darkness 
(editors included) can avert or per- 
vert the directly opposite swing. 
That is the Divine compensation 
for all these dark ministrations. 
The truth must ever be tried by 
fire; blow on Beelzebub, heat the 
crucible until the metals melt ; the 


Painter's Son, 


99 


dross shall be utterly consumed, 
the refiner shall see his own face 
clearly in the thrice-refined re- 
siduum of sterling truth. I may 
not behold the completion of this 
purification with these old eyes of 
mine ; but the Refiner has never 
yet failed of His purpose, never 
can fail. On that you may de- 
pend forever ! 

The Time-spirit, flippant, mock- 
ing, doubting, denying and irrev- 
erent ; these I say are its charac- 
teristics. Consider the unabashed 
mendacity of the newspaper: who 
believes the modern newspaper ? 
Consider the depravity of the 
modern Theatre, given up to the 
froth and filth of the debased 
Drama. Consider the cloud that 
overshadows our courts, the highest 
as well as the lowest. Consider 


lOO 


The Porcelain 


the mad struggle for wealth and 
the paralyzing power ‘of riches. 
Consider the present purchasing- 
power of gold — it is the Jugger- 
naut that is crushing to death 
what little of truth and manliness 
there is left. Singleness of pur- 
pose, serious earnestness, sweet 
humility — all these are 

“ Caviare to the general.” 

There is no money in them,” 
says the Time-spirit ; and it does 
not openly say it but it means, 
“ There is nothing else in them.” 
The Time-spirit hath taken an in- 
ventory of all things, and marked 
them with their price: only the 
fool refuseth a good offer ! 

The flippancy, the mockery of 
all worthiness, the unbelief, the 
denials and the irreverence of To- 


Painter's Son, 


lOI 


Da / are the dry rot of the end of 
the century. And what is the out- 
come of all this ? In the nominally 
Homoeopathic school certain men 
have called in question Hahne- 
mann’s teachings, when the differ- 
ence between them and him is 
such that they could not untie his 
shoestrings without a step-ladder. 
Men who are stultified by their 
record ; testifying to the efficiency 
of potencies in one decade, deny- 
ing it in the very next. If their 
first testimony is not reliable it 
challenges the competence of the 
testifier; if the first testimony is 
untrue what credentials have we 
for the veracity of the second. 
These are the pseudo-pseudo-scien- 
tists whom learned editors should 
put into the pillory, with the record 
of their infamy posted above their 


102 


The Porcelain 


heads. But journals and medical 
societies have the rather encour- 
aged and disseminated the spawn- 
ings of such ^ critical ’ cretins. 

Remember that the right to 
critical doubt, the right to call in 
question, the right to challenge is 
vested in knowledge alone. The 
ignorant, the unqualified, the neo- 
phyte should be dumb; the adept, 
proven and approved, should not. 
All else is mere babblement, idle 
vanity, a mockery and a sham. 

When the ^ scientific ’ homoeo- 
path — that most perilous of wild 
fowl — assails Hahnemann^s teach- 
ings in the windy medical journal 
or on the floor of the windier medi- 
cal society, how many homoeopathic 
students are qualified to judge the 
critic and the criticism ? Indeed, I 
may ask, how many homoeopathic 


Painter's Son. 103 

physicians ? How many of either 
have ever read the Organon ; how 
many have given it the serious and 
intelligent investigation that it 
both deserves and invites alike 
from friend and foe ? If one is 
grossly ignorant of the Organon* 
— that declaration of, exposition 
of and defense of the principles 
and practice of Homoeopathy — by 
what shadow of right does such 
an one assume the title ‘homoeo- 
pathic ’ physician ? Does a dabster 
in the practice, as an art, pretend to 
a knowledge of the principles, as a 
science ? Has not Homoeopathy 
too many of such pretenders — 
‘ doctors ’ that cannot for the life 
of them deliver the goods they ad- 

*The Organon, as an exposition of the 
homoeopathic doctrine, of necessity includes the 
Introduction to Hahnemann^ s “ Chronic Dis- 
eases ^ 


104 'The Porcelain 

vertise? Can the truth, the abso- 
lute truth, the simple truth be pre- 
sented, defended and triumphantly 
demonstrated by such advocates ? 

The mill cannot grind with the 
water that has passed,” and I 
should bitterly reproach myself for 
my failure to include the study of 
the Organon in the early curri- 
culum of this college, were it not 
for the turmoil and the torment of 
its first five years. I appeal to any 
old-time student who may be pres- 
ent whether in those early years I 
did not have both my hands and 
my heart full. 

Aside from the intrinsic value 
which we its special acceptors find in 
it or ascribe to it, the Organon has 
indubitably these merits, and has 
them merely as a contribution to 
medical literature, namely, scholar- 


Painter's Son, 


105 

sHip that evinces wide research, 
and experimental investigation — 
much of which latter in is fields en- 
tirely new. Especially do I now 
refer to Hahnemann’s Dynamiza- 
tion Theory, The Organon is the 
production of a scholar and a phil- 
osopher: of a man whom Jean 
Paul Richter pronounced “ a 
double-headed prodigy of learning 
and philosophy.” 

I have, indeed, known some pro- 
fessors of the peck-measure species 
who called this estimation into 
question. They were ‘ all right 
what else could be expected from a 
peck measure ? This is a free 
country, and every professor has 
the right to demonstrate his own 
capacity, but he should n’t forget 
that in the process he is also mak- 
ing evident the extent of his own 


io6 The Porcelain 

2 >^capacity. A common jackass ap- 
preciates the difference ‘between a 
peck and a bushel: some professors 
are not up to that discernment ! 
Do not conclude that I am refer- 
ring to professors of the non- 
homoeopathic variety only. No ; 
I have heard a “homoeopathic’’ 
peck-measure derogate Hahne- 
mann in this very room ; have 
heard more than one of such ‘ do 
up’ Hahnemann — but he did it 
only with his mouth. And on 
those very seats sat the students 
of Homoeopathy, and the professor 
talked and talked at them, 

‘ ‘ And still they gazed and still the 
wonder grew 

That one small head could carry all he 
knew.” 

(The college was nearly dead in 
those days, and I suppose that is 


Painter's Son, 


107 

what brought such ‘ blow flies ’ 
here.) 

The Organon has this pecu- 
liarity among medical books : it 
does not solicit unconditional ac- 
ceptation : it does, however, chal- 
lenge you to repeat the experi- 
ments upon which it is based, and 
to show by the results that it is a 
delusion and a falsity. Read 
Hahnemann’s introduction to the 
pathogenesis of Ipecacuanha — then 
ransack the literature of Medicine 
and find me such another challenge 
as that. You cannot ; nor has the 
man been born that can. 

The history of Homoeopathy 
shows that the Organon did not 
meet with unconditional accepta- 
tion ; there were those who would 
not swear by the words of the 
master. 


io8 The Porcelain 

That pioneer quarterly, the 
British Journal of Homoeopathy^ 
bore on its title-page the significant 
motto : “In certis unitas, in dubiis 
libertas, in omnibus charitas.” It 
is a modification of the original, 
which reads, “ In necessariis unitas.’^ 
The modification is too dogmatic : 
Unity in matters that are certain 
is quite different from Unity in 
matters that are necessary. Hahne- 
mann’s theory of dynamization did 
not establish the ‘ certainty ’ of that 
theory, but the teachings of the 
Organon indubitably declare the 
‘ necessity ’ for dynamization. 
When Hahnemann challenged the 
world to put to the test the thera- 
peutic system that he advocated, 
he said “ Imitate exactly.” This 
makes the ‘ potency ’ as we term it, 
a ^ necessity.’ This all his ad- 


Painter^ s Son. 109 

herents have not allowed ; but can 
you ^ imitate exactly ’ without it ? 

It will be a fortunate day for 
you uuder-graduates when the hard 
knocks of experience shall have 
taught you that the ‘ potency ’ is 
indeed an essential factor. I 
learned this late, but I have learned 
it ! For long years I was a 
^ kicker.’ In my first pocket-case 
every liquid was a mother tincture 
and not a single trituration had I 
above the third decimal. Surely, 
it was a kind Providence that saved 
me from becoming the undertaker’s 
delight ! To tell you the truth, 
for confession is good for the soul, 
I once got an arsenical poisoning 
nicely started — and I wasn’t mak- 
ing a proving on a patient, either. 
Oh, but I was a stiff-necked bull 
of Bashan in those days : you see, I 


no 


The Porcelain 


knew a great deal more tken than I 
do now. A few years after that ex- 
ploit with a low potency of arsenic, 
I was instigated by a fellow physi- 
cian to turn my microscope upon 
the triturations of the metals. I 
did so, aud j ust as fully expected to 
blow up the Dynamization Theory 
as the man who touched the button 
did the unsuspecting Maine. I 
will only add that the end of that 
line of research led me to make 
some dilutions myself and to carry 
them as high as the thirtieth. I 
did this so as to know that I had 
the thirtieth. I began to test them 
clinically : — 

It is my firm conviction that the 
man who expects to blow up^ not 
the theory of dynamization, but 
the fact that dilutions are poten- 
tial therapeutic agencies, has most 


Painter's Son, iii 

assuredly “ bit off more than he 
can chaw.’’ The phrase is n’t ele- 
gant, but the fact is ! My faith in 
the potencies is not a suit of old 
clothes inherited from a profes- 
sional god-father. It was made to 
order ; it was made to fit ; I earned 
it and I have paid for it ; I, too, can 
give account for the faith that is in 
me. This is not egotism ; I have 
earned the right to declare that I 
think I am qualified to take the 
stand as a witness; and for that 
you will find me semper paratus, 

I do not care to specify how 
many years it is since the homoeo- 
pathic ‘ scientists ’ began to “ get 
in their work ” on the theory of 
dynamization. They have since 
been blown so high that if they 
are docked for the time they were 
up in the sky” it will bankrupt 


II2 


The Porcelain 


the breed. They appealed unto 
Caesar, and “ science ” is the Caesar 
of that appeal. To annihilate one 
theory they attack it with another. 
They took Hahnemann’s dynami- 
zation theory and Dalton’s atomic 
theory, tied these by their tales 
and hung them over the clothes 
line to fight it out after the manner 
of the Kilkenny cats. Of the cat 
they bet on there is only the tale 
left, — it is, indeed, “ a thing of 
beauty,” but it is not “a joy for- 
ever,” as they would have the 
simple imagine. 

The night would fail me to tell 
you of the funny things these 
‘ scientists ’ did with their micro- 
scopes and of the impossible things 
they tried to do. I give them the 
‘ benefit of the clergy ’ — and they 
need it. 


Paint ef^s Son, 


Dalton atomic theory needs 
what are called molecules. It as- 
sumes them. Hahnemann assumed 
his dynameis. As what is sauce 
for the goose is sauce for the 
gander, we will let these assump- 
tions offset one another, and call 
the two theorists, Dalton and 
Hahnemann, “ even.’’ But, says 
the homoeopathic ^ scientist,’ the 
molecule is recognized by its be- 
haviour under ertain conditions. 
That is exactly true of the dyna- 
meis,^ declares the Organon. At 
the end of this round Hahnemann 
and Dalton are even ” again. (If 
it goes on in this way it is going 
to be a drawn battle.) But long 
before these homoeopathic ‘ scien- 
tists ’ were clout- Stainers, the Or- 
ganon declared that a certain de- 
gree of subdivision set free a 
8 


The Porcelain 


114 

dynameis^ or spirit in every ma- 
terial substance, which thereupon 
displayed properties not observed 
in the undivided substance. 

That is the Dynamization 
Theory in a nutshell. Now it had 
been better if Hahnemann had re- 
membered Newton’s “ Hypotheses 
non jingo?'' Alas ! it is the itch of 
trying to explain the unexplain- 
able that trips us all. That tritura- 
tion and succussion set free an 
imprisoned spirit ” is an hypothesis 
framed to explain a fact. The fact 
is impregnable ; the hypothesis is a 
flimsy figment. You can demon- 
strate the fact ; the explanation of 
the fact is a bird that yon can 
never catch by sprinkling the salt 
of hypothesis on its tail. 

Be it remembered, there were no 
hypothetical molecules dreamed of 


Painter's Son, 


when the Dynamization Theory 
was framed ; otherwise Hahne- 
mann might have said: liberated 
drug-molecules display therapeutic 
properties not observed in the 
crude substance. What then ? 
Simply this : the latest discoveries 
in molecular physics would bear 
him out and would bring forward 
a Crookes’ tube to make the visible 
demonstration of the fact. The 
clinical application of the homoeo- 
pathic ^ potency ’ is the Crookes’ 
tube that substantiates the fact in 
the Hahnemannian theory of dyna- 
mization. 

I said the appeal was unto 
Caesar, and science the Caesar of 
that appeal. It is to be hoped that 
^ scientists ’ of the homoeopathic 
species will go to school and learn 
the alphabet of science : then they 


ii6 The Porcelain 

may be able to read the hand- 
writing on the wall. It is quintes- 
sential irony itself that a graduate 
from the medical college over the 
way — the orthodox church around 
the corner — has recently written 
in a devastating little book that 
the latest discoveries in molecular 
science bear out every one of 
Hahnemann’s teachings that per- 
tains to that branch of science. I 
have yet to read any refutal of his 
declaration. I commend his book 
to the attention of those professors 
who annually annihilate Homoe- 
opathy with their — mouth . Really, 
I do not believe the jawbone of an 
ass is what it is ^‘cracked up to 
be!” 

Turning for a moment to the 
science that is not ‘ homoeopathic,’ 
to the science that “ has the name 


Painter's Son. 


117 

blown in the bottle, none genuine 
without it,” we find in it some 
singularly suggestive thought for 
the homoeopathic physician. At 
present this science is deeply 
enamoured of what it is pleased to 
call “ cultures.” In other words, 
its bottled bacteria, microbes, bacilli 
— things that are made even more 
formidable by the names given 
them in scientific baptism. Let 
some of these sesquipedalian in- 
describables conclude to hold a 
‘ family reunion ’ in the neighbor- 
hood of the appendix vermiformis, 
and lo ! the scientist who has 
“ caught on ” has his exceeding 
great reward ; for the inevitable 
“ operation ” fetches anything from 
five dollars to five thousand. 

Thousands of dollars for a skilled 
operator,” writes a New York sur- 


ii8 The Porcelain 

geon recently, and the tender 
pathos with which he mentions ‘ our 
beautiful surgery ^ is infinitely 
touching. Some of th ese unco scien- 
tifics say these festive picnickers are 
the causes of disease ; others just as 
severely scientific declare that they 
are the consequences of disease ; 
and still other scientists find that 
these identical critters with un- 
pronounceable names are present in 
both health and disease. Y on who are 
students here pay your money and 
take your choice ; but you may be 
conditioned at your examination if 
your fancy doesn’t happen to 
coincide with the ‘ partikiler vanity ’ 
of the professor of bacteriology in 
your immediate vicinity. It is 
dangerous to ‘ monkey ’ with the 
scientific buz-saw, isn’t it ? 

But having bereft the colon of 


Painter's Son, 


119 

its appendix (and pocketed the fee), 
the performance is not yet over. 
Science is as insatiable as the 
worm that never dies. The word 
reminds me that it is the patient 
that has to do the dying, not the 
surgeon. 

He that cuts and gets his pay 
Remains to cut another day. 

That is when ‘ tuberculosis ' sets 
in. The ^ operation ’ was a splendid 
success, thanks to ‘ our beautiful 
surgery,’ and the ‘ tuberculosis ’ is 
also a success. If you doubt it, 
just ask the sleek undertaker. And 
this is ‘ Science,’ — God save the 
mark ! 

The latest pronouncement of this 
charnel-house science is that tuber- 
culosis is omnipresent, — it has a 
railroad pass and the freedom of 


120 


The Porcelain 


the city ; for its bacillus may play 
its pranks any- and everywhere. 

Now you pitiful ‘ bomoeopatbic ’ 
physicians who are hankering for 
the flesh-pots of such ^ science/ 
please remove the caked boracic acid 
from your ears and listen. I pro- 
pose, as you are so fond of names, 
that we exchange. Just for a 
few minutes, — I don’t mean a 
‘ swap for keeps.’ 

I am fully satisfied with an older 
name than ‘ tuberculosis.’ Instead, 
then of ‘ tuberculosis ’ read psora: 
Science says that tuberculosis is 
omnipresent : it can play havoc 
anywhere. Hahnemann had long 
before said as much of psora. All 
that science to-day explains by its 
last rag doll, ‘ tuberculosis,’ Hahne- 
mann had far earlier ‘ explained ’ 
by his ^ psora i One calls it a 


Painter^ s Son. 121 

bacillus, the other a dyscrasia : 
what does it matter to the patho- 
logical fact underyling both names ? 

“ ’Tis strange there should such differ- 
ence be 

’Twixt tweedledum and tweedledee.” 

And while the ^ schools ’ are 
splitting hairs about names, names, 
names the smiten are languishing 
and dying. O Science and pseudo- 
science stop you ^ cultures.’ Death 
will see that germs do not become 
extinct. Turn from them, and in 
the name of God and Humanity, 
provide us with saving destructives. 
Such songs as you are singing 
have no music in them for the 
aching hearts of the widow and 
the fatherless. 

Having mentioned the patho- 
logical fact underlying the names 
'‘psora ’ and ‘ tuberculosis,’ allow me 


122 


The Porcelain 


to give what I believe an evidence 
of the existence of such a fact, 
call it what you will. The last 
visitation of the epidemic called 
la Grippe came to us in the early 
winter of 1889, and with some 
modifications has continued ever 
since. The genius of the epidemc 
has not changed, the qualifying 
adjectives have; but these do not 
perplex or deceive the philo- 
sophical observer. The homoeo- 
pathic physician who found the 
similimum in 1889, and it is a single 
remedy, did his work ‘ pleasantly, 
quickly and safely ’ with it ; he 
could, as a rule, dismiss his patient 
on the fourth day. Now the 
pathology of the epidemic disease 
explains the cardiac sequelae, the 
derangement of the heart’s rhythm, 
the choreic ventricular action, and 


Painter's Son. 


123 

that “Heart failure’’ wHicH is such 
a convenient name for that shot- 
rubbisH — a physician’s ignorance. 

Now in many of the cases, the 
majority, in fact, treated by me in 
1889 the heart to-day is doing as 
well as ever it did, while in others 
the heart has never been right 
since. Why? I am not going to 
offer a dogmatic theory — for I 
hold all theory cheaply — but re- 
membering what Hahnemann has 
written of psoi^a (of the pathological 
fact), I incline to the belief that 
the cases treated by the undoubted 
similimum for the genius epidemi- 
cuSy yet having these deranged 
hearts in spite of it, are instances 
of the psoric diathesis, or dycrasia. 
There is certainly in these cases 
something that frustrates the com- 
plete curative action of the simili- 


124 Porcelain 

mum for the grippe pure and 
simple. A philosopher calls it 
^psora^ a modern microscopist calls 
it ‘ tuberculosis be it whatever it 
may, the thing for you to remem- 
ber is that, changing the names or 
throwing them both away, the sci- 
ence of to-day corroborates the 
hard pathological fact which is in- 
dependent of any name. 

This is all that true science can 
ever do for and to Homoeopathy : 
corroborate whatsoever of truth it 
hath in it. There is not a single 
truth entrusted to the mind of 
man that need fear aught from 
science, for Science is ever and al- 
ways the servant of Truth. 

Considering the peculiar en- 
vironment of this college, have not 
some of you, teachers as well as 
students, at times forgotten this ? 
O ye of little faith ! 


Painter's Son, 125 

Teachers and students, remem- 
ber your inheritance ; be proud of 
it ; be true to its demands ; forget 
not its deservings. Devote all that 
in you is to the comprehension and 
the apprehension of it; make all 
knowledge, the fulness of knowl- 
edge, tributary to it — for such all 
truth is. 

Like the prince in the story. 
Science is walking the earth with 
the lost glass slipper in its hand 
seeking the rightful wearer thereof. 
Many false claimants are “ trying 
it on ’’ and vainly. In the fulness 
of time Cinderella shall be known ; 
contempt and contumely may be 
heaped upon her by the proud and 
haughty ones now in high places ; 
but it is she only whom the prince 
will espouse. 

Now go from hence and witness 


126 


The Porcelain 


tlie blandisliments of ^ science be- 
bold the glamour of her labora- 
tories, hearken to the tales of won- 
der told therein. Hold fast all that 
is good. Then read your OrGANON, 
master it, apply its truths at the 
bedside. Let the years bring to 
you the ripe fruit of all this. Do 
not be impatient. Remember that 
“Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. ’ ’ 
Perhaps when you are gleaning 
the precious aftermath in thankful- 
ness, you may give a passing 
thought to the memory of the 
worn-out workman who came to 
you by night, bringing the chal- 
lenge : Under which king 


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